RESEARCH

ADVOCACY

Framework Convention on Global Health

OverviewThe Centre of Excellence for Gender, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (CGSRHR) at the James P Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University, in partnership with the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at the Georgetown University Law Centre are working together to develop the Framework Convention on Global Health (FCGH). This is being done in collaboration with partners in the United States, Uganda, Cameroon, India, Nigeria and Pakistan in assisting with the drafting process and coordination activities.

FCGH would create a right to health governance framework; a global health treaty based on the right to health and aimed and closing national and global health inequities. It would provide standards to ensure healthcare and underlying determinants of health, along with an international and domestic financing framework to secure sufficient, sustained funds while addressing the social determinants of health. It would establish a transformative understanding of the right to health for all and ensure accountability, which is now missing, and adapt this right in this globalised world.

The FCGH would clearly define extraterritorial obligations, while ensuring that policies in other sectors are responsive to public health needs, endeavouring to elevate the status of health and demanding adherence to the right to health in other international legal regimes, such as trade and investment. The FCGH states that organisations and individuals from all spheres of public life ought to refuse tolerance of unconscionable health inequities that persist today.

It further states that the power of law, coupled with powerful social movements, can create change and contribute towards social justice. The particular focus is on ensuring that the FCGH acts as a powerful instrument in achieving this goal, advancing health equity, strengthening accountability, empowering people to claim their right to health. Securing a strong FCGH will require social justice movements – for health as well as linked movements such as for environmental stewardship and justice, workers’ rights, and immigrants’ rights.

Activities

The team is currently developing the Framework Convention on Global Health (FCGH), a treaty that would build on the post-2015 development goals’ momentum on universal health coverage, and more.

Partners/donor

Donor: Rockefeller FoundationTimeline: 1stMarch 2013Partner organisations: O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at the Georgetown University Law Centre, Washington DC, USA